C.H.A.C.O Dog Training & Behavior Consulting LLC

My dog Pepper is a high energy bernedoodle, I needed a plan to give me a foundation to make REAL progress. Almudena provided a plan with very clear instructions that I understood and just as important so did my dog! I was willing to put in the time and energy and have seen some great results. We used my dogs high energy and desire to play as a tool for training. I now have a plan in place when she has "leash reactivity" or simply goes wild when she sees other dogs and its working. I play with her more often as a part of the training and we are both happier.

Almudena is a life saver! She was instrumental in helping me figure out what my dog needed after years of consulting with other trainers and vets. I thought I had tried almost everything and other professionals were suggesting it was time to consider behavioral euthanasia. But her thorough and thoughtful consultation provided me with the resources to find medications and behavioral modification that finally addressed very challenging resource guarding issues. My dog has a new lease on life with fluoxetine and gabapentin. His resource guarding of food and space is virtually gone. He is mellow but still has moments of joy, so I don’t get the sense that he’s too dulled under a cloud of sedatives. Almudena’s help was the game changer we needed and offered not only hope but clear action that saved my dog and transformed our household into a safe, happy place for all our rescued pups.

CHACO Dog Training Center was a negative experience for us and personally very heartbreaking. I was initially impressed by the slick web page and also the posted philosophy of dog training. Almudena Ortiz Cue’ had, to my mind, an impressive list of credentials, but I was a little troubled by the fact that there were very few (2) actual reviews on her website and only one on Google and they were all pretty reserved in their praise. I contacted her by email and she agreed to try to help us with our three year old Sheltie girl who grew up during the Covid lockdown and had not been socialized properly - she would bark at strangers and spin out of boredom and frustration due mostly I believe to our fairly sedentary lifestyle (I am wheelchair bound, but my husband is very active). We had already taken our dog to two veterinarians who both examined her thoroughly to eliminate the possibility of any neurological damage; they both gave her a clean bill of health. Almudena Ortiz Cue' sent me a 16 page, extremely detailed form to fill out about every aspect of our dog’s life - I mean really, really detailed. It took me hours and hours to fill this thing out, but I did my best to be honest. She made it VERY CLEAR (over and over) that the initial consultation would be for 90 minutes and would cost almost $200 and if it went one minute over 90 minutes the cost would nearly double. She repeated many times that she expected payment in advance for THE ENTIRE AMOUNT of her multiple training session program. Payment rules and cancellation penalties were almost laughably detailed in the form - that should have been a red flag for me, but I was still hopeful. She met with my husband since he would have been the one working with her. She wanted the dog to be crated the whole time she was at our house and a very lengthy tiny font liability form had to be signed and initialed many times just for her to be in the same house (not even the same room) with our crated 30 pound dog. She was obviously uneasy even though our dog hardly barked at her! She eventually threw a few pieces of chicken to our dog from across the room - and that was it! That was the hyped consultation/evaluation! Wow… She did not seem particularly knowledgeable and made no training plan as promised in our initial conversation. She was eager to get the check and left at 90 minutes on the dot. She said she would be in touch after she “thought about it”. Well, sadly (or perhaps not so sadly), we never heard from her again. Take some advice from me and give this “trainer” a miss unless you have $200 you want to give away in exchange for a huge waste of time, not to mention the heartbreaking disappointment. I’m sure there must be reputable dog trainers out there, so KEEP LOOKING and good luck!